January 22, 2014

Pop up retail events are a major revenue stream for my company. We sell our products at all kinds of events such as street fairs, comic cons and festivals. A large part of our success with pop up retail has been booth set up. Here are some of the most important elements of our booth:

1. Awesome Signage
You can’t sell products to people if they don’t notice you, that’s why an eye-catching outstanding display is key. Make sure your booth is tidy, well-merchandised and easy to browse. You want your customers to be able to see all the product options, pricing and the brand name itself pretty easily.

When we exhibit at shows we use a large logo banner in the front of our booth and display pictures of our best selling designs right up front. That imagery lures people into our booth and gets them to shop. Having our signage front and center means we can grab the attention of passersby and help them decide that they do want to stop at our booth. They don’t have to get close to get an idea of what we sell.

2. Loss Prevention
It’s a sad fact that sometimes people steal, and as a small business that can be a huge problem. It’s a good idea to merchandise your booth in such a way that stealing from you would be hard. If you have products that customers can touch and pick up, make sure they are all within your view so you can keep an eye on them. For more expensive items you may want to have them in a display case so people can’t pick them up and walk off. Sometimes when I do conventions other exhibitors have their booth so covered in products that they can’t possibly keep an eye on everything, making them a target for thieves.

When we exhibit at shows we display our messenger bags clipped to the side of the booth so they’d be hard to grab and run off with. We keep our tees neatly folded in in shelves behind us so customers can’t just grab them. We keep lower dollar value items like keychains and pins on our table, but that means fewer items on the table to steal and the items that are there are low cost items that wouldn’t be a nightmare to lose.

3. Marketing Materials
Exhibiting at shows should be as much about marketing as it is about selling your product. We maximize our exhibiting experience by having a newsletter sign up at our booth and giving out fun free swag with our branding.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: do not give out swag that just has your info on it. People don’t keep business cards or a vinyl sticker with just your logo (unless your logo is super awesome, like the Johnny Cupcakes logo or something).

When we do shows we give out vinyl stickers featuring our cute characters like Fuzz Aldrin. Our url is in the bottom corner but the focus is on the art and it gets people to take these stickers and keep them. They end up on skateboards, car bumpers, laptops and other places they’ll get seen which is a great advertising tool for us. We also hand out funny comic strips that people keep and hang up at home or work.

We give out all this free swag that people are happy to take because it’s cute and funny. We are happy to give it away because we know it will help them remember our brand. Even if they don’t buy today they might buy in the future or send friends our way.

4. Well-Organized Inventory
When you’re busy at a show the last thing you want to do is root around for inventory under the table. Having your inventory organized helps get customers in and out faster and helps you restock displays quickly.

We keep our shirts neatly folded in stacks sorted by design and then size so we can easily find a large mens Fuzz Aldrin shirt or a small ladies Unicorn Ranch shirt in a few seconds. We even organize our stacks of shirts by color so we know all the black shirts are on the right and all the jewel tone shirts are on the left.

Traveling with items like clear plastic storage boxes of varying sizes helps keep like items together and makes it easy to see what’s in each box. Even separating like items by size or style into large ziplocks helps avoid digging around for things you need to find quickly.

Got some favorite tips for exhibiting at shows? Share in the comments below.

November 8, 2012

If you followed any of the coverage of the US elections this fall, you probably heard the pundits talk about two things: how much the candidates are spending and who has a better “ground game”. This is interesting because the same exact tools that win elections can help you win as a business. It’s pretty well acknowledged that a big part of Obama’s success was his ground game, and I’m a big believer in developing a ground game for your business too. You can win by spending money — many elections have been won that way — but it’s not the only option.

Here are three ways I’ve used our ground game to boost sales this year, even though we didn’t spend much money on traditional advertising:

1. Shaking hands and kissing babies
When people feel a personal connection to a brand or a political candidate, they’re more inclined to throw their support that way. This is why political candidates get out there in front of voters and it’s why I spent most of my year getting out in front of my customers. By the end of 2012, we’ll have appeared at 16 pop-up retail events all over the US. We traveled north to Boston, west to Chicago (twice). We did events in Philadelphia (THREE times), DC (2x), NYC (3x), Pittsburgh, and Baltimore (3x). In March we’ll head south to Orlando. We travel to large events with tens or even hundreds of thousands of consumers, and our primary motivation is to get them to meet us and love us — even if they don’t buy anything right away.

We know just showing our line to people and chatting with them will help spread our brand awareness. They might not buy from us today, but there’s a good chance they will remember us and buy from us some other time.

You can employ this strategy, too. Think about festivals, craft shows and outdoor markets, but also think about trunk shows and home parties. Choose activities that appeal to your target customers and enable you to talk to them one-on-one.

2. Making It Stick
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: give people a reason to remember your brand. Political campaigns are usually happy to give you t-shirts, bumper stickers, pens, all sorts of stuff with the candidate’s name on it. They want you to remember their candidate so when it’s time to vote, you’ll remember to vote for them.

We employ the same strategy. We are always giving away loads of fun free stuff. We give it out at shows, we give it out with our orders. We give out cute vinyl stickers with our characters on them, 1″ pins, funny comic strips. We don’t give out stuff that looks like marketing material; we don’t just give out a business card, we give out something our customers would actually want so they’ll keep it and remember us.

Just yesterday a customer told us he ordered from us because a friend of a friend who lives across the country came to visit, and had one of our vinyl stickers on something. That’s how he found us.

3. Staying on Message
If you have a message that resonates with your audience, you’re more likely to attract their support, whether you’re running for office or promoting your brand. What does your brand do? Does it make life easier, does it make your customers more attractive, does it help your customer be a better parent? My own products are conversation starters — we design items you could wear out to a bar and it’s likely that someone will strike up a conversation with you based on what you’re wearing. We’re not just selling clothing, we’re selling human connections.

When you’re presenting your product on the ground, think about how you can present more than just the product: how can you present the benefits of owning your product? Think about employing signage, videos, live demos or brochures depending on the item you sell.

Have you used ground game this year to boost sales? Tell us about it in the comments below.

April 10, 2012

“If you don’t understand why this is awesome, then get out of my office!” – overheard from a customer who bought a diver riding shark messenger bag

My partner and I recently decided to stop applying to craft shows. The reasons are many-fold, but we’re not giving up on doing pop up events. We actually make a ton of money at them, it’s just a matter of picking the right events for our business. Lately, we’ve focused on doing comic cons, with a few other niche festivals here and there. Here’s why we’ve fallen in love with comic cons.

1. No Juries
Comic cons aren’t juried, so there’s no hipster police to appease. My partner and I have no real desire to put a bird on it, we like our space cats and pterodactyls and we’re not going to change that. When our monthly sales goals are at stake, we can’t leave that kind of thing to the whims of craft show organizers.
2. Bad Weather? No Problem!
Since comic cons are indoors we never have to worry that it’s going to be too hot, too cold, too rainy, etc. If anything bad weather works in our favor since it’s all the more reason to come indoors.
3. Gigantic Targeted Audience
Comic cons draw a big crowd that appreciates our absurd and nerdy style. Cons we attend draw anywhere from 30,000 to over 100,000 people. The best part is it’s pretty much all our kind of people. Comic con attendees aren’t looking for feather silhouettes and nautical stars, they want our space cats. We love spending the day with hordes people who get our sense of humor and are as excited about our designs as we are.

4. Surrounded by Pros
While craft shows tend to attract mostly hobbyists, exhibitors at comic cons are usually pros. When we’re working on set up or break down before and after the show we can trade stories with the other exhibitors and swap useful information about other events, suppliers, etc. It’s nice to be able to talk to other business owners who make their living doing the kind of thing we do.

Takeaways for you: I’m not suggesting all my readers start exhibiting at comic cons. If your products aren’t on the nerdy side, they’re probably not your kind of event. What I am suggesting is looking beyond just craft shows to see what other events attract your target audience. Consider other types of cons, festivals and events that draw a large crowd. Make a list of the types of people who buy your products and then look for pop up events that draw that audience.

March 13, 2012

As the weather warms up craft show season begins. Whether you’re doing outdoor markets, comic cons, trunk shows or other live events a mailing list sign up is a valuable tool for your exhibit space. Here’s how we make the most of email gathering when we do live events for Ex-Boyfriend:

At the show:

1. Have an attention grabbing sign up
Not everyone will buy at a live event, but if you capture their email address they might buy online in the future. To make sure you get email addresses from people who like your products, be sure your email sign up is hard to miss. You can decorate it with cute doodles, print it out on hot pink paper, display the sign up on a decorative stand. Be creative, but make sure the sign up sheet is visible to everyone who stops by your booth and checks out your products.

2. Offer an incentive to sign up
You can give people a nudge to join your list by offering an incentive. You can try something like giving out a free 1″ button or vinyl sticker in exchange for their email address. You can entice visitors with the promise of an exclusive coupon code or entry to win a prize. Pick an incentive that makes sense for your fans and make sure visitors see the offer when they see your sign up sheet.

3. Set expectations
A lot of people are wary of giving out their email address and for good reason. No one wants to be spammed or emailed constantly with useless ads. You can address these concerns by setting expectations about your newsletter. Be sure to let visitors know how often you email (weekly, monthly, etc.) and what they can expect in these emails (new product news, coupons, etc.).

After the show:

1. Keep them on a regional or interest-based list
When we get sign ups at live events, we always keep those customers on a mailing list for their event type or region. For example, if we do a craft show in Chicago, we keep those subscribers on a Chicago craft show list. If we do a comic con in New York, we keep those subscribers on a comic con list.

We do this so that we can send those customers alerts about other events where they can find us. We can tell Chicago customers next time we’ll be in their city. We can tell comic con goers about which comic con we’ll be attending next.

2. Send a welcome emailAfter we do a live event, we always send a welcome email to our new subscribers. This does a few things:

Gives them a chance to opt out if they decide they do not want our newsletter

Reminds them that they met us and signed up for our list

Suggests other ways for new fans to follow us (we include links to our social media accounts and invite our new subscribers to follow us on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Gives the customer a push to buy something if they didn’t purchase at the event. We usually include a coupon in the welcome emails, offering something like free shipping or a discount. That way a customer who didn’t buy at the show or found something they like online that we ran out of at the show has an incentive to buy that item from our website.

November 1, 2011

No matter how carefully we plan it, we always end up with too much of one thing and not enough of something else when we do live events. We hate to tell a customer we are out of her size or we just sold the last one of whatever she had her eye on all day. The truth is we never run out of anything, we just can’t bring everything in the universe to a 10×10 square booth at a live event. We usually try to offer to ship desired items we’re out of and even offer free shipping. We’re better off losing a few bucks on shipping than losing an order.

The trouble is our booth is always a madhouse at live events. We need a way to efficiently and seamlessly take mail orders on the go. This is why we made “Out of Stock” sheets. Our Out of Stock sheets are professionally designed 2 part carbonless forms. They allow our customers to simply fill out their shipping information and order. When they’re done, the customer gets a copy and we get a copy.

Why have Out of Stock sheets:

They make you look professional and trustworthy
Sure you could scribble down the customer’s info on your notepad, but it makes you look like an amateur. It doesn’t inspire confidence that the customer’s shipment will arrive and it doesn’t give the customer an instant copy of her receipt.

Gives your customers a transaction record
Your customer wants to walk away from the transaction feeling confident in your business. An instant receipt gives her a feeling of proof that the transaction is legitimate.

Saves you time and headaches
If your booth is busy with customers flinging cash at you for stuff you have on hand, you don’t want to take time out to write down the details of a mail order. You don’t want to be trying to remember what details you need or scribbling in your notebook. You want to just hand your customer a clip board, pen and a form that collects all the info you need. You hand her the form, she hands it back completed and the transaction is done. She walks away with a receipt. You leave with a properly prepared order sheet.

What to include on Out of Stock sheets:

An attractive professional design
If you aren’t any good at design, work with a design professional. Having a nice looking order form instills confidence and reinforces your branding. Be sure your form includes your company logo and fonts. You also want to make sure you use carbonless forms that automatically make a duplicate of the pages as the customer writes. That way your customer gets a copy of the order and you get a copy.

Customer Contact info
Be sure you get all the necessary contact information you need to fill the customer’s order. This includes name, address, phone number and email address.

Order Details
Include sufficient fields for the customer to provide their order info. If your products vary in size or color be sure you’ve got fields for the customer to fill out that information.

Marketing
Be sure your form includes a checkbox to join your mailing list and a coupon code for your online shop (if you use coupons).

Company Contact Info
Include your company web address, company phone number and email address. You want the customer to feel confident that she can contact you if she has a question.

Delivery Details
Set expectations about delivery times for your customer’s order. Let her know what shipping method you use, how long the order will take to ship and what the expected delivery time frame is.

Happy Friday! Below are my recommended reads from around the web for the week:

Fans, Friends, Followers and Why None of It Matters – I had to lead off today’s link collection with this one, because I loved it so much. It’s not about what the title implies, it’s really about how you choose the “experts” that you follow for business advice. I couldn’t agree with the author more. So many people follow others based on their existing following instead of the content of their writing, and as a result a lot of people not worth listening to get a pretty big audience. I have so much more to say about this but I’ll leave it to a post of its own, for now, check out the article!

Marketing Strategies: Customer Engagement vs Traffic Generation – Megan writes a lot of great stuff over at Craft MBA but this piece is absolutely one of my favorites. Not because she recommends a couple of Smaller Box tools, but because she so eloquently explains what so many of her readers get wrong about marketing.

This past weekend, we did our first live event in several years. We don’t really like doing live events all that much. They’re a lot of work, they tend to be on weekends when we’d rather not be working, and they are exhausting. That said, we’ve decided they’re a useful tool for growing our business and meeting our customers, so we’ve decided to bite the bullet and start doing them. This past weekend we sold our tees and messenger bags at Art Star in Philadelphia.

Now conditions this past weekend were not ideal. The weather was gloomy and rainy, even pouring at some points. Our booth flooded. The turn out wasn’t what it would have been, had the weather cooperated. All of that said, we sold thousands of dollars in tees and bags, in just 14 hours. How did we do it? Here’s what worked:

1. Have an eye catching booth
One thing we noticed about this event, was that we felt like we were surrounded by a sea of white. Pretty much all the tents were white or beige. Many of them didn’t have much going on in the way of signage. At an event where everyone’s attention is split in a zillion directions, a color scheme that matches the scenery can be a real impediment.

The good news is you can order canopies, displays, table cloths, etc. in a variety of colors. So think about the colors associated with your brand and consider brightening your booth with bolder colors and larger, enticing signage. Ideally, a large bold banner at the top of your booth should display your brand name along with a short punchy tagline about what you do.

At Ex-Boyfriend, our brand colors are red, white, and black. So we got a red tent and a big bold banner in black white and red featuring our company name, pictures of our most popular characters and our tag line “clothing that starts conversations” From across the courtyard, our booth stood out simply due to colors and signage.

2. Be Friendly
This sounds like a no-brainer but I can’t stress this enough. If you want to make money at these events, be sweet and friendly to every single person who comes up to you. I don’t care what they look like, I don’t care how they are dressed, I don’t care how old they are, I don’t care how sure you are they won’t buy. BE NICE! Be sweet to grandmas, be sweet to toddlers, be sweet to guys who look like they’re in Hell’s Angels. People will surprise you. Everyone is a potential customer and if you treat them like they’re already your friend and start chatting with them, they are more likely to actually become a customer.

When we saw people checking out our booth (and a lot of them did since we had a colorful display), we said “Hi! How are you today? Feel free to come on in and have some free candy and look around”. We said this to every single person we saw. And we sold products to people we might never have expected to sell to. People who looked nothing like what we had in mind as our regular customers. Some were buying gifts for friends or family, some were just people who surprised us. We treated every single person we saw like we were happy to see them, because we were. No one was taken for granted. (If you click the candid photo above, you can see a larger version. Notice the body language and facial expressions on both the customers and our booth crew — everyone looks relaxed and happy, like they’re chatting at a party.)

If you think I’m belaboring this point, then listen up. The most telling thing I heard all weekend was this (from a mom shopping with her small children): “This is the best booth here this weekend. You guys are so nice. You’re the only ones who are smiling and said hello to me. Everyone else here is just scowling and acting like they are too cool to be bothered with me. You guys actually are cool.” No customer should have that experience at an event. I felt bad for her, embarrassed by the other vendors, and thankful that our crew brightened her day.

During the weekend, my friends and I took turns going on breaks and checking out other booths. I won’t say people were mean, but I didn’t find one other booth giving out the kind of warm reception we had at our booth. Not a single vendor even talked to us, unless we were buying something. I am not at all suggesting you hard sell people. But making them feel welcome and comfortable, like they’re among friends, is going to make a huge difference in your conversion rate.

I think it also helps to work at your events with friends whose company you enjoy. If your booth crew is genuinely having fun, people are drawn to that. The more fun energy you can generate in your booth with your crew and customers, the more people you’ll draw.

3. Have freebies
Free stuff is a great for several reasons. It draws people in, it starts the conversation and it gives people something to take with them to remember your business. We had very nice glossy postcards printed with a popular print from our collection on the front and a promo code on the back. Everyone walked away with a free miniature print and our web address and a promotion code. The postcards we made didn’t look like ads, they looked like small art prints, making it more likely that customers would hang onto them, instead of throwing them away. We also gave out free candy at our booth, which is a great way to get people to approach and start chatting.

4. Put best sellers front and center
Although we sold some of everything at the show, we had particular items we sold out of entirely. They were hot items that everyone wanted. We made sure they were at the front and center of our display, because they drew people into our booth and got people talking about our products.

5. Take online orders
It’s impossible to guess exactly how much of something you’re going to need to take to a show, so have a back up plan for running out of hot sellers. We brought our laptop to the event so we could take orders. Anything that was sold out we offered to ship to our customers’ homes free of charge. Whatever money we lose on shipping, we chalk up to customer acquisition costs and don’t sweat it.

6. Have an email sign up
Be sure to have a notepad out that customers can use to leave their email address. When you go home with your new list, send those customers a custom email welcoming them to your list and thanking them for visiting your booth at the event. Remind them of any special offers you’ve still got running related to the live event, so they feel encouraged to place an online order, even if they didn’t buy something at the show.

7. Have purchase incentives
There’s a reason people selling cars throw in things like free maintenance for 1 year or 0% APR. These little sweeteners can move a customer from undecided to yes. You want to do the same thing at your booth. Consider offers like free gift with purchase or discounted pricing for buying several items. These offers encourage people to make purchases and make larger purchases.

8. Learn from your customers
As you sell at an event, take special notice of who you sell a lot of product to. Are most of the people handing you cash moms, teens, lesbians, dog owners, etc.? This is a really important thing to notice because it can give you ideas about who to market to when you’re planning your marketing efforts. You might uncover a new niche market you haven’t catered to before, that loves what you do.

Also pay attention to what people ask for. Do they want to know if your products come in a certain color. Do they want to know if it comes in a certain size or with certain features? These requests can help you shape your product development efforts, so take notes on what people are asking for.

9. Have a big mirror
One of the friends who came to this show with us loves hats. He was checking some out at a booth that only had a hand mirror. He ended up not buying because he couldn’t see himself well enough in the hats to decide if he wanted one. If you sell something people are going to wear, even if it’s jewelry or bags, bring a full length mirror. If people can try something on and see themselves using or wearing it, they already start envisioning owning the item and are more likely to buy it.

Don’t forget: Crowds and and a fun atmosphere attract more crowds, the photo above was taken shortly after the first photo featured. As pictured above, the number of a our visitors doubled in just a few minutes.

March 22, 2011

As the weather gets warmer, a lot of you in Smaller Box land will be doing some outdoor vending. One thing that’s problematic about the real world is that people can’t simply click to take actions. Things are certainly moving in that direction with sophisticated wireless devices, but even those involve a little typing. To make it easy to get passersby onto your social networks, consider using SMS.

Both Facebook and Twitter allow their users to like and follow pages with a simple text message (provided their users have their mobile numbers registered with Facebook/Twitter). You can encourage them to text their way to your pages with a simple sign.

For Facebook
Ask people to text “like [page name]” to 32665
For Smaller Box the text message would be “like smallerbox”This page will even make you a handy sign you can print and post at your booth.

For Twitter
Ask people to text “follow [twitter name]” to 40404
For Smaller Box the text message would be “follow smallerbox”

Make some signs for your upcoming event booths so people can easily connect with you online, even if they’re just passing by at a crowded show.

June 9, 2010

Summer is craft show season, and I know a lot of my readers are gearing up to apply and attend various shows around the country. Before you fill out those applications, make sure the show is going to be profitable. While some of you are thinking “of course it will, it’ll be a huge show”, I’m wondering; have you done the math?

Let’s imagine you sell handmade bags and you’re going to Renegade, a fairly large show. Your booth is going to cost $325.00. Now let’s take 2 scenarios:

Pre-Show Expenses:Scenario 1: You are doing a show for the first time; you need to buy a tent, signage, booth decor, display equipment, etc. This can easily set you back $300.00. You are also from out of town and have to spend 2 nights on a hotel plus meals. With a budget hotel in a major city and inexpensive meals, you’ll still spend at least $300.00. Let’s say you live 5 hours drive from the show and spend $50 on gas and tolls. (I’m assuming there are 2 people going to the show since doing a large show alone is pretty difficult.) Since you are spending 10 hours in your car round trip and there are 2 workers, there goes 10 hours in labor. If you even want to make $25 per hour you’ve spent another $500. (10 hours x $25 for 2 people.) At this point your expenses are $1,475.00 and you haven’t been to the show yet.

Scenario 2: You’ve done shows before and have all the equipment and you live near the show so you don’t have to pay extra for hotels and eating at restaurants. You are only out $325.00 so far.

Now let’s look at labor:We’re still looking at 2 workers, and let’s say you spend a total of 24 hours on labor. (2 workers x 8 hours at the show = 16. 2 workers x 4 hours of packing up product, driving to the show, setting up pre-show, tearing down post-show, driving home.) If you’re sticking to the $25 per hour model, you are spending $600 on labor here.

So far:

Scenario 1: $2075.00 has been spent
Scenario 2: $925.00 has been spent

Profit Potential:Let’s say our show goers sell bags for $50.00. The bags take 1 hour of labor to make and cost $10.00 in materials. The total cost of a bag is $35.00 so each bag sold makes $15.00 profit for the business.

Scenario 1: You need to sell over 138 bags in 8 hours to break even ($2075/$15)

Scenario 2: You need to sell over 61 bags in 8 hours to break even ($925/$15)

Can you sell 8-18 bags per hour? I can’t answer that for you, but it’s something you have to consider. If you want your business to earn a profit you need to sell a lot more than that. The math above is just about breaking even.

If you say the show is about getting exposure, consider this: can you get more “exposure” by going to a trade show, or advertising online? How many people will see your products at this show and how many of them are important to be seen by? (Meaning are they buyers for stores you’re trying to sell in, etc. And if so, is there a more cost effective way to target that audience?)

Compare craft shows to online ads:For $850.00 you could buy a mini ad on Cuteoverload.com which receives over 4 million impressions. Will 4 million people hear about your brand at the craft show? If your ad gets a .25% click-through you’ll have 10,000 people visit your website over the course of a month. Will 10,000 people visit your booth at a craft show? If you get a 1% conversion rate you’ll sell 100 bags. Your business would see a profit of $650.00. ($15 per bag x 100 bags. Subtract the $850 cost of the ad.) Meanwhile, you haven’t spent your weekend in a sweaty crowded booth.

I can’t tell you definitively that you should advertise online or where, nor can I tell you whether you should do craft shows. I personally prefer to spend my money advertising online because it’s what has proven effective for me, but every business is different. With any business expenditure it’s important to do a cost benefits analysis and make some projections on cost and profit potential. To help you out, I’ve put together a profit and expense worksheet for craft shows. You can download it from the link below: